Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Ph.D.!

I can now legitimately have a blog titled kd-PhD. Last month, I defended my dissertation (and passed)! It was terrifying, but I also always enjoy presenting my work to an engaged audience, and the (perhaps somewhat captive) audience was excellent. My liberal arts background ended up seeing me through to the end - in addition to the more expected scientific questions, there was a question about Foucault!

If you would like to be one of the proud few who have read my thesis, it can be found on on my website.

Since then, I've been packing, moving, on vacation, and am now in San Francisco! I start at Google next week.

There's good precedent for asking personalized joke questions at the end of a defense. Prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov was originally a chemist writing fiction on the side. Apparently at the end of his defense he was asked a question about a chemical substance he invented for a story.